


whose laugh i could recognise anywhere

by closingdoors



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, bc new tony/pepper give me a heart attack, but it progresses through the mcu timeline towards the end, thinking about them getting their footing, this is mainly post-iron man 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-17 23:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14840937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closingdoors/pseuds/closingdoors
Summary: The press conference wasn't the first time he'd proposed to her.(Tony, Pepper, and the gentle surprise of domesticity.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I want your midnights  
> But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day  
> \- New Year's Day, Taylor Swift

They're hidden in one of the small streets of Tokyo, off the beaten path, rain littering down and forming puddles on the tarmac. The wind curls around her shoulders, makes the end of her ponytail drift lightly, but neither of them make any sign to move from their table under moderate cover and inside. It's comfortable. She watches passersby, more locals than tourists, and none of them bat at eyelid at Tony even when their eyes glance over him. He doesn't pay them any attention - used to being in the limelight more often than not - and lifts his bowl closer to his mouth, slurping his yakisoba. 

One thing, out of the many, that had surprised her about Tony is his love for authenticity. She had never really noticed it prior to their relationship. He had always been flashy. Buying the most expensive bottle of alcohol to take to a party; hosting lunch with members of the board at the Ritz; he'd even flown a chef from Italy out to his place in Dubai for a dinner party. Though, she thinks with a wry smile, that had been with people that cared about his money, not himself, and he'd provided them with what they expected to see. Still, she's surprised that it's taken her so long to notice. She can't recall, back when she was still his personal assistant - or, as he joked, his shadow - a time when he'd ever done anything like this. Dodged the fancy restaurants and hotel spas in order to lead her down back alleys to a family-run street-food business. It'd lead her to wonder how many times he'd snuck away to discover places like this by himself, while she stayed back in the hotel probably skyping a meeting he was supposed attend, taking his place. And perhaps it'd been shallow of her, but she hadn't thought Tony knew anything  _but_ expensive taste. He'd grown up surrounded by money, she'd presumed he didn't know the value of the little man.

Tony places his bowl back onto the table. It's entirely too small, their table. She's knocked knees with him half a dozen times, but he just grins at her every time, his eyes lighting up as they always do when she touches him. 

"Don't like it?" 

Tony nods at the plate before her. While his bowl is almost empty, she's not even halfway through her dish.

"I love it, actually," she assures him, dipping the tempura in its tentsuyu and taking a bite.

She's being entirely truthful: it's mouthwatering. She'd had her doubts when Tony had lead her to the battered-looking building, and sat her outside on the rickety table, but the food is delicious. The hosts are gracious, too - an elderly man cooking in the centre of the room, and a young woman serving while making small-talk with the other diners. If they know who Tony is, they haven't said a word, and it's nice, for once, to simply enjoy his company. It's rare that they get to go out for dinner without her phone buzzing with e-mails; or his adoring public, the cameras, watching their move through the windows; they're often interrupted by men in suits attempting to shmooze Tony into offering them a contract on their latest project, as though the CEO of his company isn't sitting directly across from him.

"What?"

She's staring again, she realises, and ducks her head down to her plate.

"Nothing."

"Pretty big elephant to be nothing."

She glances back up at him.

"When did you find this place?"

He sniffs. "Five years ago. Snuck out when you all thought I was nursing a hangover. The takoyaki here cured me."

It worries her, knowing that there was a time when he could do that: sneak out without her realising. When she woke alone, and assumed he was safe simply because she had no reason to believe he wasn't. Obadiah had still been one of Tony's closest friends at the time. At any moment, he could've hired someone to take Tony, while he was wandering the streets and Pepper thought him to be feeling sorry for himself in bed.

"You expected a more salacious story," Tony states.

"I just can't picture you somewhere like here, that's all," she replies.

He looks caught between being offended and pleased by the statement. She nods towards the Tom Ford suit he's wearing, and thinks of her own Gucci heels, which are currently being bruised by the uneven sidewalk.

"Hey, you don't like it, I'll take you somewhere else," Tony says, and he's already placing down too many bills for their food. "The hotel recommended some places you'd like. Whatever you want, we'll get it."

"Wait a second. Tony, stop," she says, reaching over to stop him from pulling his blazer on. "I never said I didn't like it."

He does this - panics. Well, he panics about a lot of things, but mostly her. Like he's never doing the right thing, which is strange, considering the confidence she's always known him to have. But they're new to this, both of them, as much as he seems to think he's the only one wading in uncharted waters. Yes, she's been in long-term relationships before, and he hasn't (he'd confessed his longest relationship to have been three days long, but he'd only stuck with it to prove a point to Rhodey). However, she's never been in a relationship with her used-to-be-boss-now-technically-her-employee-who-is-also-Iron-Man before. Yeah, it's a lot to wrap her head around.

She feels her cheeks growing warm. "It's peaceful. Quiet."

He stares at her. "Yeah."

 _Like home,_ she thinks.

"I wish it was like this more often. Just you and me," she tells him, and keeps her gaze fixed firmly on her plate.

He's quiet, and she drops her hand from his arm, taking another bite of her tempura just to give herself something to do. She wishes she had some of the confidence she used to have when she bossed him about. But there had been clear lines then, boundaries they didn't cross in their relationship. 

"I'm gonna marry you someday."

Pepper drops her chopsticks. She distantly hears them clatter against the ground as her head whips up to face him. He's smiling, a nonchalant thing, that makes her pulse hasten its pace.

"I'll get you another set," he says, and she has no idea what he's talking about until he stands and enters the restaurant, leaving her staring at him open-mouthed through the window.

The young woman fetches him a new set of chopsticks immediately, and Pepper watches as he follows her small talk easily. The longer she watches, the more she feels herself beginning to panic. She's never heard those words from a man before. She'd been proposed to, once, shortly after becoming Tony's PA, but it'd been a proposal born out of sheer desperation to keep her, not out of love.

 _Is_ it love? It sure feels like love, to her, but she's not told him. Pepper considers herself brave, but she's yet to find the courage to get those three little words out. Because Tony is a changed man, yes, but she's still on unsteady ground as to how committed he really is to this thing they're doing. She doesn't think he'll leave, but what happens when he gets bored? She's known him for too long, knows what he's like at the start of a project: he throws himself into it entirely until, a couple weeks later, he's burnt out and moving onto the next thing, already forgetting what it was his hands once spent hours crafting.

Tony reappears, handing her the chopsticks, and she accepts them without comment. She goes back to eating. She can feel his eyes on her the entire time, but never moves to speak, and she wonders if he's shocked himself to silence, too. That'd be like him. So without a filter. 

He waits until she's finished before he speaks.

"So, how about it?"

Pepper finally looks at him.

"How about what?" 

"Marriage."

He reaches for his sake, eyes never leaving hers.

"Are you asking?"

"Yes."

"No, I mean, is this you  _asking_ me to marry you? Right now?"

He considers this for a moment.

"Yep." 

Pepper sighs, reaching over to cover one of his hands with hers. He places the sake back on the table without taking a sip. 

"No."

His eyebrows raise. " _No?_ "

"You can't honestly be shocked I didn't accept," she says, rolling her eyes.

"Shocked? Kinda. Hurt? Very," he says, placing a hand on his chest. "I'll have you know I'm a catch, Pepper Potts."

"I don't disagree," she replies demurely. "But this is something people... take time to reflect on. You know, think about. You have a track record of being impulsive." 

"I resent that. I've thought about this for at least," he pauses, "two minutes."

She laughs, a small thing, but he still smiles in reply. He reaches over to kiss her cheek, his goatee scratching against her chin when he dusts a feather-light kiss against her jaw too, before pulling away. Her fingers curl around his tighter. 

It's a silly notion. Thinking about accepting, while they're sat by the rain and people pass them by on pedal bikes and others with their jackets held over their heads. She still pictures it, though. How wide his smile would be. How he'd probably order her the biggest, most ridiculous ring on his phone right then and there until she convinced him to go for something more her style, beautiful but tasteful. 

"Pep?"

"Yeah?"

"You've got sauce, uh," he motions to the left of her lip.

Embarrassed, Pepper reaches for a tablecloth, sighing when she remembers there aren't any. He hands his pocket square, which is far too expensive to have her wiping sauce all over it, but she has no other choice. He doesn't lose the light in his eyes as she does, though, and she tries to remember when it is they became  _this._ She'd always been the one who'd walked in on his messes. She prided herself on being put-together, never a hair out of place. Now, she's - 

Comfortable.

She folds the pocket square to cover her stains and passes it back to him. He slips it into the inner pocket of his blazer, unfazed.

"Tony?"

He's pulled his phone out, frowning at something he's reading, but locks the screen immediately to switch his attention to her. Unusual. She's used to him half-listening, his brain always skittering away, never satisfied with being occupied by just one thing.

"One day. Maybe."

"So, we're engaged to be engaged?" 

 _God,_ engaged to Tony Stark. To Iron Man. What a dream-world her life has become.

"No," she answers. "I'm just saying... don't rule it out. But not for a long time."

"I'll wear you down."

"I'm sure you will."

"I give it a month."

"Five years."

He smirks. "Six months, then."

Pepper stands, slipping the strap of her bag over her arm, not bothering to remind him that there's an art exhibit they're here to attend, knowing he'll follow her regardless. Reminding him will only make him whine and beg to go somewhere else.

Tony adds a couple more bills onto the stack he's left, probably enough to fund at least a couple dozen meals at this place, before he pulls his blazer on and begins to follow her back down the street, nipping at her heels the entire time. 


	2. Chapter 2

When she wakes, she isn't surprised to find that Tony isn't beside her. As JARVIS slowly lets the morning light in as part of her wake-up call, which has allowed her to sleep in to a late eight o'clock on her day off, Pepper burrows herself on Tony's side of the bed. Which, really, is all of it. He's a hogger. She hadn't been surprised, the first night she'd stayed, when she woke to find herself on the edge, half of the pillows under Tony's head and most of the comforter caught around his legs. She'd simply adjusted the pillow under her head, took a deep breath to calm herself before she started overthinking what she'd gotten herself into, rest her head between his shoulder-blades and wrapped her arms around him to fall back to sleep.

By the time the room is full of golden morning light, Pepper finds it easy to pull herself out of bed to slip on some underwear and an old shirt of Tony's. That'd been a surprise, too. How eager he had been to share everything with her. She'd woke the first morning intent on grabbing some of her things that she kept in one of the guest bedrooms, but Tony had slipped a shirt of his on her before she had a chance, and the look in his eyes - deep and dark, not quite possessive but not quite too innocent, either - had her buttoning it up without question. It became a habit after that to use take his things without asking, something she never would've dreamed of before. He didn't seem to mind one bit. 

She takes the stairs slowly, running her hands through her hair as she yawns. They've grown habits, too. Tony, of course, isn't predictable. Half of the time she wakes to find he'd woken in the middle of the night to do repairs on a suit. Sometimes he's beside her, warm and sleep-ruffled and deliciously, wonderfully, hers. Other times he'll already be out of state, leaving an open video call on the pillow beside her, and a note to wish her a good day.

They have routines for all of these scenarios, of course, which should scare her, especially as she has no idea when they formed them. But on days like today, she'll go downstairs, have her coffee, do twenty minutes of yoga before he inevitably seeks her out and tries to convince her to take a day off (which she never does unless, like today, she was already scheduled to have a break).

Pepper reaches the bottom of the stairs and is halfway across the room towards the kitchen before she realises she can hear voices. 

It's too late to backpedal. JARVIS will have undoubtedly alerted Tony to the fact she's awake (an alert he'd set as early as the first night she stayed, he'd confessed to her, much to her horror and endearment). He'll come looking for her if she doesn't appear soon. 

She pauses and listens to the voices. Of course, one is Tony, rambling at a hundred miles a second and swallowing all of the space in the room. She hears the patient chuckle of Rhodey follow after one of Tony's jokes.

Okay. Well, not a business associate, thank god, but it's not someone she wants to see her in a shirt that barely covers her ass. She's known Rhodey as long as she's known Tony, and she has no plans to lose the respectable, courteous dynamic they've built.

She spins on the spot, aiming door and hoping like hell she'd left a long coat - even a cardigan, though she doesn't think she's ever worn one in her life - hanging by it.

"Pepper?"

Cursing quietly, Pepper twists to find Tony and Rhodey emerging from the kitchen. They're both dressed casually, but wearing far more than her. Tony's carrying one of his SmartGlass tablets, traces of pancake syrup still around his mouth, hair sticking on end. His face lights up when she turns to him. Rhodey clasps his hands behind his back and averts his eyes to the ground. She's never seen Rhodey blush before, but she thinks perhaps he is now.

"Tony," she greets, and can't resist from walking towards him when he his hand twitches as if to reach out for her, "I hadn't realised we were expecting guests."

"We?"

The word seems to escape Rhodey without his permission. He glances between them as Pepper reaches Tony, Tony's arm snaking around her waist and his hand settling on her hip. Rhodey keeps his gaze above shoulder-level.

"Are you two, uh... you hadn't mentioned that she'd moved in, Tony."

"Oh, no, I haven't," Pepper rushes to correct him. Tony frowns. "I was just... here."

She's  _here_ a lot, a voice whispers in the back of her mind. Not just in a professional capacity, either. Tony's house has been a home to her for a long time, but now she barely sees inside her own apartment, other than to grab a change of clothes or if he's away. She doesn't like being in this house without him.

"Sorry," Rhodey say. Tony's still frowning. "I just assumed. You said  _we,_ so."

When exactly had that happened, too? When had she stopped being  _I_ and become  _we?_ She bites her lower lip.

"Yeah, I did. Anyway, I should - "

Tony interrupts her. 

"Why, exactly, were you so offended?" 

She slips his arm from around her waist.

"Tony..."

"No, no. I get it. You only want to use me for my body."

"Tony!"

She feels herself blushing bright red, even the tips of her ears are burning. Beside Tony, Rhodey stifles a laugh, covering his mouth not-so-discreetly with his fist.

"You should've seen her face when I asked her to marry me."

Rhodey stops laughing. "You did what?"

"I said no," she says quickly, and Tony rolls his eyes. " _Tony_."

"What if I put the ring in your morning coffee? Will you say yes then?"

"I am going to get changed," she tells him, stepping away when he tries to rope her closer.

"Why? I like this. You should dress like this more often."

She raises an eyebrow. "You want everyone to see me walking around like this?" 

Tony considers this, before snapping his mouth shut.

"That's what I thought," she tells him.

Pepper retreats up the stairs, heading straight for the shower. She spends the next hour blowdrying her hair, putting on a little make up, and deliberating outfits - between the usual business-wear she's accustomed to Rhodey seeing her in, and the casual clothing she's started wearing around Tony since they got together. Never had she thought merging her two worlds, both of which involved Tony in the first place, would be so hard. She'd never really given much thought, though she'd done a lot of thinking about the two of them, about how other's would expect her to look as Tony's girl.

There's so much of them she wants to keep  _private,_ that she fears if she reveals any of it to the outside world it'll ruin this perfect, quiet bubble they've found themselves in. Tabloids haven't been afraid to slander Tony before. Or her. They've been on Tony's case for years. Now that they're together, she's been picking her news sources carefully, and nipping any PR nightmares in the bud. Though she's grown a thick skin during her time working with Tony, and has had more than her fair share of Tony's PR scandals to deal with, she thinks this could be the one that might penetrate that layer.

Once she's narrowed her choice down to two outfits, Tony waltzes in, stripping his top and reaching into his closet for a cashmere sweater. His eyes trip over her, stood in just her underwear and a robe.

"Rhodey and I are going for brunch. Well, I'm treating Rhodey to brunch, since he's never paid for any of our meals in his life, the freeloader" he adds. "Wanna come?"

"Oh, I shouldn't intrude."

His eyebrows knit together.

"Who's intruding? I'm inviting. And I'm paying so, really, declining me is pretty rude."

She finds herself smiling in spite of her mood.

"Well, I wouldn't want you to break the bank."

He rounds the room towards her.

"I don't know if you know this, but I'm kind of a billionaire."

"Kind of?" She asks. He hums in response and wraps his arm around her waist. "That doesn't sound very certain. Maybe Bill Gates will have me, though."

He snorts. "Please. You know I fly pass him on the Forbes list."

"Do I now?"

His palms settle on the small of her back as hers settle on his shoulders. He leans in to capture her lips with his, drawing her closer. She sighs into the kiss, unable to help herself from running a hand through his hair. He's been growing it out again, longer and fluffier, and her fingers curl within in before she's able to stop herself, and he makes a low growl at the back of his throat that has her pulling away.

"Rhodey. Brunch," she says breathlessly.

"JARVIS can babysit," he replies, leaning in again.

She pulls out of his grasp.

"Go. I'll meet you downstairs."

Tony acquiesces, but he does pause in the doorway.

"I think white's your color," he says, and disappears around the frame.

Pepper stares at the outfits choices once more before muttering under her breath,  _get a grip, Pepper._ She grabs the white lace panel t-shirt and pairs it with her favourite pair of jeans, leaving her skirt-suit behind.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered making this a separate to the story oneshot, mainly because of the length, but it suited the tone/themes of this story too well. I hope you guys don't mind the varying length compared to the other vignettes!

He says it first.

The weekend begins like any other. On Friday she wakes, showers, dresses, and heads to work after ignoring Tony's protests that she should take the day off. She cuts the meeting with Legal down by an hour after solving the tension between two chairmen and has a business lunch with Sundar Pichai before spending the afternoon sorting through the less glamorous, tedious piles of paperwork that are the downside of her position as CEO.

Flanked by Happy, Pepper leaves the office dead on five - she'd promised Tony to actually leave on time today - and finds her boyfriend right outside, leaning against his Audi, sunglasses on and ignoring the gossiping workers passing by. For a moment, Pepper has déjà vu to high school.

Collecting herself, and dismissing Happy, Pepper heads towards him nonchalantly.

"Mr Stark."

He smirks. 

"Miss Potts."

Pepper presses her ankles together.

"Is there something I can help you with?" 

Tony pulls his sunglasses off, slipping them into his suit jacket pocket, before taking a step forward.

"It's more about what I can help  _you_ with."

He opens the passenger door for her, a palm on the small of her back, and she already knows she'll be dealing with a PR nightmare in the morning. While her relationship with Tony hasn't exactly gone unnoticed, they've been discreet, and she's neither confirmed or denied the rumours. Even when the press have followed them on date nights, watched them through the glass windows of restaurants, they've not touched, bar a little footsie Tony initiated. They've given them nothing to launch a scandal on. And she's followed Tony's lead with it happily, eager to keep her private life - well, private.

Tony stops her just before she goes to sit in the car.

"Hey, Pep?"

She rests a hand on the car door and faces him.

"Can I kiss you?"

She blinks. He's never...  _asked_ before.

"If you want to," she says, but it sounds like more of a question than she intended.

He gives her a look. "Do  _you_ want me to?"

Oh.  _Oh._

She almost blushes. This whole time she thought he'd been holding back in public because he wasn't comfortable airing their relationship to the press. How had she missed the fact he was following her lead, that she was the one drawing the line?

"Yes," she answers quietly.

It isn't heated, it isn't passionate, it's just a soft kiss, where she lays a hand against his cheek and smiles after. Her brain kicks into overdrive, how the press will see this - Tony, picking her up from work. Tony, opening the door for her. Tony, kissing her in public, at the workplace, in front of all her colleagues -

"Okay?" Tony murmurs.

Pepper nudges her nose against his before she pulls away.

"Okay."

He closes the door for her once she's sat. Pepper takes a deep breath, holds it for five seconds, and is exhaling once Tony climbs in the driver's side. She glances over to the sidewalk, where Happy is watching them despite the fact she'd dismissed him for the day, and he shoots her a thumbs up. She half-laughs wearily. What does it matter how the press try to spin this? All that matters is that the people closest to her are happy. That Tony's happy. That she's happy.

And she is. She really is.

"I meant it, you know," Tony says, waiting for her to buckle up before they pull away. "Whatever I can do for you this weekend, you got it. You wanna go to Venice? Paris? Vienna? We'll have the jet ready in ten. I've got bags packed and in the truck. Or somewhere closer, the road'll be ours - Vegas, San Fran, New York, whatever you want."

"What brought this on?"

Tony frowns.

"What?"

"Why're you insisting on taking me somewhere?" 

"Do I have to have a reason?"

She settles back in her seat. Perhaps he doesn't. This is Tony, after all, impulsive, often irrational, Tony Stark. Who, for months now, has lit up when she simply walks in the room - she's noticed, because he doesn't even try to hide it.

So maybe this is her new normal. Her and Tony jetting off for weekends in Europe, Asia, South America, wherever, just because he wants to treat her. 

"So, where to?"

"Honestly?" She asks, waiting to see him nod before she speaks. "I just want to go home."

His grip on the steering wheel tightens. His jaw sets.

"Okay."

"I appreciate the offer, Tony. I just... want to spend the weekend at home. Relaxing. Maybe take a bath. God, it's been so long since I had a nice, long bath," she groans, rubbing her temple. 

"There're baths in Venice," he mumbles, but it's quiet, so she pretends not to hear.

Pepper crosses her ankles and switches the air con off. They're edging towards the end of October now, the days are shorter and darker, the evenings colder. It's given her a reason to cuddle up closer to him when they're simply relaxing on the couch, not that he would expect a reason from her. He's tactile: she's noticed that he never stays still, not around Rhodey, or during his consulting hours for the Avengers Initiative, but when she touches him, he leans into it, and seems to relax as long as she's beside him. He'll bounce a knee under the table when he's spending time with Rhodey; he'll tinker and dance and always be messing with  _something_ in his workshop - yet, at breakfast, if she rests a hand on his thigh, he stills; when they're watching some lame sci-fi movie he's endlessly criticising and she lets her legs drape over his lap, he doesn't move a muscle; at night, when she curls her arm around his waist and rests her forehead against his shoulder, the only movement is his fingers running through her hair until they both drift off to sleep.

Even now, almost six months into their relationships, she still finds herself cataloging the differences between how she expected Tony to be in a relationship versus how he actually is. And, of course, he's better than she'd ever dreamed. She'd always known him to be generous, kind-hearted, selfless (a little too much) but she hadn't realised how much those traits would be amplified  _for_ her.

Pepper drags herself out of her reverie, observing their surroundings. 

"Tony, where are we going?"

She glances over at him and he shoots her a confused look.

"Home. Like you said."

It dawns on her slowly, as they weave through the roads. The misunderstanding.

"When I said home, I didn't mean my apartment," she confesses quietly.

His grip on the wheel loosens.

"You didn't?"

"No. I meant... your house." 

They hit a red light and she watches as Tony allows himself to smile. That full, beautiful smile that reaches his eyes, where his joy is magnetic. She struggles to quell her own smile.

"Do we need to talk about how you just called my place _home_?" 

She turns her face towards the window, feigning disinterest. 

"Not at all."

"You can move in, you know."

"I won't."

"You sure? It's a one time offer."

"You've asked me  _three times,_ Tony."

The light turns green and they pull away, a little faster than before, and she hides her smile in her palm when his hand reaches over to rest on her thigh.

*

Saturday begins with Tony insisting on making breakfast. He's still in bed when she wakes, but his whole body is humming with energy, like a live wire, spilling over when he tells her his plan to treat her. She's doubtful, but he ushers her away whenever she tries to step in - even though she insists she's  _just watching,_  he insists JARVIS has been giving him cooking lessons - and she waits patiently, still in her pyjamas even though it's gone eight, at the table for whatever concoction he's created.

Surprisingly, the food is edible, though the bacon is slightly too chewy, and the eggs watery. He doesn't complain when she makes a face at the texture of the eggs, and laughs when she struggles to swallow the bacon. She appreciates the effort regardless, and the time spent in the soft morning light eating breakfast he made for her is a warm memory she'll come back to whenever her mother questions her choice of partner.

He leaves her to alone for her morning yoga and runs her a bath afterwards, in his ridiculously luxurious marble bathtub, overflowing with bubbles and a glass of rosé sitting beside it. She points out that it's too early to drink, but he just shrugs, switches the music on and heads off to call Rhodey and annoy him. She ends up tentatively taking a sip from the glass, excusing herself because it'll just go to waste if she leaves it, and with one sip she can already tell it's her favourite. The man doesn't remember her birthday, but he'll always remember the crumbs of information she drops without realising.

She ends up calling him back to the bath after draining the glass, revelling in the feeling of his chest pressed against her back, his pruned fingers drifting lazily along her thighs, his lips dusting kisses against her temple.

They spend the rest of the day in his workshop together. She's content just to watch him, though he doesn't seem to believe her. At first, he keeps trying to offer other things to do, and even tries to get her to help him tinker. Eventually he gets so caught up in his work that he seems to forget that she's there, and she stretches out like a cat on the couch he'd installed, finding herself falling asleep all too quickly that evening.

She wakes in darkness to find him carrying her up the steps to their room. He murmurs for her to go back to sleep and she rests a palm against his cheek before doing just that.

*

On the Sunday, she wakes alone, surprised to find that it's already half eight. Pepper grabs a pair of Tony's sweatpants, rolling the waistband twice to fit her thin frame, and an old t-shirt of his with a science slogan to wear before she pads downstairs, rubbing at her eyes. She can't hear his music blasting from the workshop downstairs, but when she reaches the bottom of the stairs she spots him anyway.

His shoulders are rigid, the phone in his grasp tight as he stares at the television before him. She reaches him, winding an arm around his shoulders and leaning her hip against his side, before she turns her attention to the television.

The news headline STARK AND OLD P.A GO PUBLIC accompanies the two women and men debating on-screen. One woman, every button of her shirt done, fabric crisp and hair flat, is saying  _and what kind of message is this sending to young girls out there - we have this woman, Miss Potts, who had no credentials for the job of CEO in the first place -_

The other woman, whose fake nails are so long Pepper wonders how she isn't covered in scratches, interrupts the other.  _Exactly! Every reporter wondered how she'd bagged the job -_

The man, whose bald head is shiny under the camera lights, lets out a deep chuckle.  _We all know how she got it now, don't we?_

Onscreen, the report switches from footage of the news anchors to a photo of her and Tony kissing. It's a grainy image, obviously taken on a phone hurriedly and from afar, but there's no mistaking the two of them, especially with Tony's ST4RK numberplate. 

_The real question is - how long this has been going on, and what else is she after?_

"Mute," Pepper sighs. 

She'd known this was coming, of course. The slander. The accusals. They don't bother her, because she knows they aren't true, but the thought of dealing with the PR is enough to induce a headache. 

Tony's still harsh lines to touch, and she settles beside him on the couch. 

"Tony," she says, reaching for his fisted right hand and pulling it open slowly, until she can line her palm up with his, "it's okay."

"No, it's not," he spits quickly.

Pepper almost startles. Tony's never been concerned with how the press see him - one of the perils to when she was his P.A had been trying to get him to stick to the speech they'd prepared, and to stop falling out of nightclubs with a girl on each side when there was paparazzi right outside - though she understands because he's grown up with it. It's been a constant white noise to him.

Yet, now, there's a vein beginning to bulge in his forehead.

She threads her fingers through his and squeezes.

"I'll make some calls. Make sure whoever sold the damn photo is fired."

Pepper's shoulders drop. "You don't have to do that." 

"I'll get these," he waves an arm to the screen, "fired too. All of 'em." 

"Tony, we always knew this was going to happen." 

"What? No we didn't."

"Of course we did!" She almost laughs. "That's always how our relationship was going to look to the press." 

"It shouldn't. They have no right to talk about you like that."

"I know. But these people are vultures. It doesn't matter what they think either. Not to me," she adds at his incredulous look. "They'll get tired of repeating themselves. We'll prove them wrong."

"How?"

She smiles. 

"Just by being here, like this, together," she answers.

The tension seems to slip out of Tony then. She lets her free hand drift down the length of his spine, the fabric of his vest top soft against her fingertips, and she presses a kiss to his bare shoulder. 

"I want to release a statement," Tony tells her. "I want to tell them we're together. Officially. That it's serious."

"Okay. We can sort that out."

Tony grins.

"Can we also add that you've moved in?"

"Don't push your luck." 

"Engaged?"

She jabs her finger in his ribs for that one, and when he falls back against the couch in mock pain, he drags her with him, until they're wrapped around each other.

*

That night, they order pizza. Tony greets the poor delivery boy in his Iron Man suit just to see the look on his face, and tips him double the amount the meal is worth, even as she rolls her eyes. 

He ditches the suit so they can sit together on the couch, reruns of an old comedy on screen, the lights off so that the room is only filled with the colour from the television. She swings her legs up so that they rest in his lap, and he massages the arches of her feet as she happily finishes off her half of the pizza - veggie supreme, while he'd added almost every topping imaginable to his half, even  _pineapple._

Neither of them really pay attention to a word said onscreen. It's all just background noise to her. She finishes the pizza and wipes the grease from her fingers with a paper towel. He stops her from getting up, and screws it up in a ball, launching it across the room even as she reminds him it just means one of them'll need to remember to pick it up later. He silences her with a swift kiss.

There's something strangely intimate, she realises, about moments like this. She filters through the memories of her past relationships - with both good and bad men - and can't recall ever doing something like this, just soaking up an evening with her partner, just because she wants to, not because it was planned or because she  _should_ or because she just wanted to get laid. Yes, moments like this, arguing over grease-stained towels and toppings on pizza and sitting wrapped up in each other, are more intimate than knowing what the other looks like naked. There's a companionship she's never had before, a type she certainly hadn't expected to find in him, especially when she'd first started working for him. 

His eyelids begin to droop, and she withdraws her legs from his lap.

"Tired?"

"I wanna stay here," he complains, pouting like a child.

"I didn't say we had to move."

She pats her lap and she's surprised when Tony hesitates.

After some coaxing, he manoeuvres himself so that he's laying along the couch, his head resting in her lap. She runs her fingers through his hair, nails digging into his scalp gently, smiling as he hums and closes his eyes.

"Mm," Tony shifts and smushes his cheek against her thigh. "Love you."

She stops. Instantly. Her hands freeze in his hair, her mouth hangs open, and she stops breathing.

"What did you just say?"

For a moment, she thinks he might've fallen asleep. She's half-relief and half-annoyed. 

He opens one eye to peer up at her.

"What?"

"What did you just say?" She asks slowly. "Just now?"

Tony frowns, both eyes open now. 

"I love you."

It doesn't have any less of an effect the second time.

He lifts his head slightly.

"You didn't know?"

She shakes her head, unable to get her mouth to work now that he's speaking so candidly about it.

He settles back in her lap.

"Huh. Thought I'd already said it," he continues. He closes his eyes. "G'night. I love you."

His breathing evens out slowly, and she rests one of her hands on his chest, above the arc reactor, waiting for the trembling feeling that's rattling through her bones to subside. 

Wow. Tony Stark is in love with her. 

Some part of her had already suspected it. He certainly acted like it - but she'd never known him to commit to anything like this before.

Being the exception to his rules, his past behaviour, is taking her down paths she thought she'd never walk with him.

She'd walk them every time.

"I love you too," she murmurs, tapping her hand twice against the arc reactor.

Before she closes her eyes to sleep, under the gentle blue light emitting from the screen, she watches him smile.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote three different versions of this chapter (hence the delay)... I hope this suffices.

Pepper's Christmas preparations have always begun in the early days of November. She books her flights back to her small hometown, grins and bears the Skype calls with her parents who discuss the meal they plan to cook and the family they plan to host (Pepper always ends up taking over, her parents have no sense of organisation and she ate dry turkey too many Christmases as a child to deal with it as an adult), and places filters on JARVIS for anything Christmas-related. The latter part of her preparations hadn't started until three years into her employment with Tony. He'd always be grouchy around December, and somehow her naivety completely missed why, and she'd fly out home for a week to come back and find Tony had gone into self-destruction mode. Now she knows that the preparation is easier to deal with than the fallout. 

In the lead up to her first Christmas with Tony however, she falters. 

November creeps up on her almost overnight, while she's clinging to Tony's frame, his broad shoulders blocking the date from her mind. She becomes so wrapped up in him that she doesn't even consider whether he'd want her around or not until December hits.

Her parents are quiet when she tells them that she won't be visiting home. The slight tug of her father's brows and the downturn of her mother's lips play on her mind for hours afterwards, and her mother's voice pierces the quiet as she dresses for bed,  _are you **sure** he's the one for you, Virginia?_

That night, Tony flops on the bed so that his head hangs off of the edge of the mattress, watching her upside-down. He looks younger somehow, softer, and as she untucks her hair from her t-shirt collar he gets a misty look in his eyes, the same look he always gets before he kisses her.

Yes. She's sure.

 

*

 

For a week, Pepper finds a way to evade the topic at every opportunity she gets, though she tells herself she  _needs_ to address it. Tony probably thinks she's still jetting off back home, to a warm house full of family who are irritating but make her heart full, while he drinks himself into the ground. Not that she's seen him drink - excessively - since he overcame the poisoning. She thinks this could be the time to break his clean streak.

Then, finally, on December fourteenth, she blurts it out over pancakes.

"I'm staying for Christmas."

Tony misses his mouth with his fork and ends up smearing syrup across his chin. 

He wipes it away quickly. 

"Huh."

Pepper cuts her pancakes into quarter pieces.

"If you want me to."

"I - assumed we'd be going to your folks," he says slowly. "It's what you always do. Thought I'd tag along."

She cuts her quarters into eighths as her words get lodged in her throat.

"You'd do that?"

He frowns. "Of course."

She tries to picture him there. Tony, struggling to squeeze into a spot, at the table that's already too crowded and too overfilled with food. Exuberant and selfless as always, letting her parents grill him for hours, while her nieces climb over him and make him play with their Iron Man figurines. Her heart squeezes tightly. There would be so much expectation. Too much of a role to take on. She forgets, often, how she's the only one who really  _knows_ him. Not a persona, or a superhero. Just Tony Stark, a man who loves too much and is loved too little.

Pepper abandons her pancakes, rounding the kitchen island to wrap her arms around him. He doesn't question her, lets their bodies fold together naturally. They always flow so well, like liquid, just filling their container.

"How about we make our own traditions?"

He nods, a tightness around his eyes. It's the first Christmas he's celebrated since his parents died. She knows this. There's a shadow looming over them, expectations to fill...

She threads her fingers through the short hair at the nape of his neck. 

"It doesn't have to be a big deal," she murmurs.

He releases a breath that had been keeping his body rigid. He melts against her and she rests her chin atop his head, his stubble scratching against her clavicle.

"Thank you," he mumbles into her chest.

 

*

 

On Christmas Day, she wakes before the sun has risen. The only source of light in the room is the arc reactor. 

It's a familiar blue glow. Soft, reassuring, provides her with the knowledge that his heart is still beating, even if it has once been the thing slowly killing him.

Tony shifts towards her, his arm a dead weight beneath her body, and she tucks herself into his side.

"Merry Christmas," she whispers against his collarbone, fingers curling above his arc reactor.

They almost hadn't had this.

 

*

 

He wakes her when the sun is rising, too full of energy while she is bleary-eyed and fuzzy around the edges. He points up to the ceiling, and she finds that he's covered the entire thing in mistletoe.

He grins, a little lopsided and cocky. 

"I think this means you owe me a kiss, Potts."

Pepper lets her fingers dip beneath his t-shirt and drift against his sides.

"I think it means I owe you more than that."

Her Christmas with Tony starts off slow, and unhurried, and leaves her skin humming.

 

*

 

There's a sort of aching haunting the house.

After she steps out of the shower, Pepper finds his bedroom empty. If the date had been different, she wouldn't have thought anything of it. Still, she takes her time getting dressed, knowing he needs space to process before he's ready to be comforted. He's always been like that - even from the moment she'd started working with him, when they butt heads and she had been furious how someone so arrogant could be so attractive. He would lash out, or be too erratic, and then he'd disappear off of the face of the planet before returning without an apology, but a softer kind of silhouette, a man willing to listen to reason. For a little while, at least.

The house is silent, too. No television, no music. No JARVIS. 

She finds him in his workshop. He doesn't flinch when he hears her enter. Doesn't turn to greet her, either. It's always been hard to adapt to Tony's up-and-down's. Especially before Afghanistan, he'd been  _get the house in dubai ready_ and the next minute he'd trashed half of his workshop and passed out with shards of a whiskey bottle splitting his lips. It had been hard, then, to recognise her feelings for him, as little as they had been at the time. It had been a professional courtesy to pick up the pieces, make sure he gets stitches, and follow his orders when he threw a party that night anyway. Now his ups-and-downs are a little less severe, a lot less addiction-related, but harder on her because of how much it aches to see him hurting. Still, she thinks, he's worth it.

Pepper rests against one of the counters. His back is still towards her, shoulders stiff, his neck taut. 

"Sorry," he eventually grits out.

"You've nothing to be sorry for."

He shifts, just slightly, so she can see a sliver of his face. He's playing with something in his hands, but she can't tell what.

"I'm really trying. I wanted - " He stops. She watches the way his shoulders drop. "You should've gone to your parent's place." 

Pepper shakes her head, even if he can't see her.

"Christmas is about spending time with the people I love. I'll be here next year, too, if you'll have me."

Tony turns just a little more, so he can peer at her out of the corner of his eye. 

"I'd spend every Christmas with you."

Pepper pushes off of the counter and slips into his lap. He buries his face into the crook of her neck, and she feels his tears, wet and warm, against her skin.

"Me too, Tony," she whispers softly.

 

*

 

In the midst of grief, they do create their own traditions.

There's no turkey at Tony's place. No cranberry sauce, potatoes, or gravy. They wind up eating leftover Thai food from the night before, sharing the same pot of green curry, watching reruns of 80s movies she worshipped religiously as a kid and he never had the time to watch. 

He takes the mistletoe down, but not before stealing one more kiss from her, pressing her up against the doorway until her knees go weak and he pulls away with that misty-eyed expression that makes her feel powerful. She can reduce Iron Man to a sentimental, besotted fool. No-one else can say that.

When the sky swirls into dark ink, Tony surprises her. Over the speakers, he has JARVIS play a simple piano piece, and Tony pulls her up from the couch so that they can dance. Nothing extravagant, just swaying side to side, her hand in his, and he quietly admits the piece to be the last thing he ever heard his mother play.

 

*

 

Her Christmas with Tony ends slow, and unhurried, and leaves her skin humming.

"Pep?"

Pepper hums, resting an elbow either side of his head to lift herself up and off of his body, fingers tracing random patterns against his skull.

"Marry me."

She prides herself in the fact that her hands don't falter.

"Someday."

His arms tighten around her.

"Yeah?"

The kiss she presses against his lips is barely there. He gazes up at her reverently.

"Yes, Tony."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter that ran away from me length-wise. Hope you enjoy regardless.

_Remind me to take you out for shawarma_ is the first thing she hears from him after New York.

It's from a number she doesn't recognise but it's unmistakably Tony. 

Her hands tremble as she clutches her cell in her hand. The dial tone rings for too long, low and monotonous, a little patchy - how many cell towers were damaged? - and just as her heart is in her throat, about to curse him for sending her something so stupid and not replying, there's -

"Pep?"

Pepper's stutters a breath, pressing her lips against her fingers to keep it trapped. Tony hears anyway.

"Yeah, me too," he says, a half-laugh tailing the end of his words.

She turns her chair away from the others on the jet, SI workers who have given her odd looks at the order to drive back into the fray, and finally lets her tears fall. She cradles her forehead in her palm, her elbow resting against her knee.

"Are you okay?"

She hears background noise on Tony's end. Something that sounds like sweeping, then the clink of china.

"Yeah," he says, but his voice is rough, and there's something he isn't telling her, she can already tell from just one word. "We all made it out. Widow saved the day. Cap bashed a couple aliens' faces in. The big green guy even got to play."

There's a sigh on Tony's end, followed by a quiet voice saying _Tony, please stop calling me that._

Pepper laughs, a little nervous, a whole lot delirious.

"What happened to your phone? Why are you calling me on a number I don't know?"

"Well," Tony pauses. Sniffs. She hears him take a bite of his food. "Suit's pretty busted. Most of these lot don't have a clue what a phone is, but bow and arrows let me steal his."

There's a sound of a slight scuffle on the other end.

"Tony?"

"Still here. Robin Hood doesn't like his new nickname so much."

"You promise you're okay?"

He's falls silent again, but there's still background noise. The clink of china again, the chime of a bell, and then silence. He must've stepped outside, she guesses.

"You get to D.C?" He asks.

Pepper smiles wryly, eyes scanning the world through the plane window. It's all so small from up here. Is that how their world had looked, to those that invaded? How Stark tower had seemed? Even Tony - Iron Man - must've been laughable from so high up. A human-sized robot, armed and reckless when it comes to keeping people safe.

"I'm on my way back to LaGuardia now."

She expects him to object, but he doesn't.

"Tony... what happened?"

He deflects again.

"I was thinking. We could turn the tower into a base for the Avengers. You know, cat's out of the bag on that one, and I guess I'm an honorary member now. Well, Iron Man anyway. Least I could provide these lot is a soft bed and something to eat. That isn't shawarma."

"Whatever you want."

"Really?"

"You honestly think I'd object when aliens just invaded?"

He laughs, quiet and soft, and she leans back in her seat. The leather beneath her is comfortable, but she aches to rest against him, to reacquaint herself with his body and search him for any injuries, to reassure herself that he's alive.

"Just get here soon, okay?" He asks.

The sun is beginning to set, and from up high, she watches the orange hue encompass everything.

"You won't even know I was gone," she promises.

"I always do," he replies quietly.

 

*

 

Happy navigates around the abandoned cars and alien bodies strewn through the streets. Pepper tries to ignore it, but there's so much destruction everywhere. Massive holes on the side of skyscrapers, windows of small shops smashed, blood smeared across the side of cars. By the time they reach Stark tower, there's a huddle of S.H.I.E.L.D agents, all looking very panicked as they handle a long, thin briefcase.

Pepper jumps out before Happy has even switched off the engine, appalled at the damage the tower has taken. A lot of it is minor - windows that will need replacing, locks that will need to be refitted - the most notable is the STARK logo itself, the majority of it destroyed. She's always, perhaps a little foolishly, thought of everything Tony has made to be indestructible. Or, as least, she's always liked to believe them to be.

Tony emerges from the door and she makes a beeline for him, dodging the debris on the ground, teetering a little precariously on her heels. Tony meets her halfway, his grip crushing, but she squeezes him back just as tightly. Over his shoulder, she spots Coulson ushering the other agents away. She doesn't care. She's done measuring her public displays of affection for Tony, regardless of who he is. She loves him. She thinks he might've almost died. She will behave how she damn well pleases.

Tony dusts kisses against the curve of her jaw, and her hands fist his t-shirt on the small of his back.

"Tony," she murmurs.

"Nuke. Had to send it somewhere," he mumbles into the juncture of her neck, confessing truths where only she will hear, "so I flew it up out of that portal. Thought I wasn't coming back. I was... I was so damn scared, Pep."

She grips him harder, pulling back onto to kiss him fiercely. He makes a desperate little noise that she echoes.

"Don't ever do that again."

He barks a laugh against her lips.

"I make no promises."

She presses her forehead to his.

"How about twelve percent of a promise?"

Tony grins, wide and beautiful.

"I can settle for twelve percent."

 

*

 

The nightmares start three days after.

She wakes in the dark, unsure of what roused her, until she feels Tony jerk beside her. Pepper frowns, one hand blearily searching for him. She squeezes his bicep and closes her eyes to sleep once more - 

And then he whimpers.

Pepper's eyes slam open. She bolts up, hearing him cry again, and as her eyes adjust to the dark she notices how he's gripping the pillow. He's torn half of the pillow cover, and the sheets are twisted around his legs, sweat dripping down his neck. She grips his bicep tighter, shaking him. He startles away from her to the other side of the bed. She follows after him, even as his body curls in on itself. 

"Tony," she murmurs. Then louder: "Tony!"

He wakes with a start, splitting the pillow in two, sending downy feathers into the air around them. They settle on his shoulders and in her hair. JARVIS slowly turns the light in the room on, only to a gentle amber hue, but enough that they can see.

"Sorry," Tony says instantly, already beginning to pluck the feathers from her hair. 

She bats his hands away. 

"Are you okay?"

"I'm always okay."

"Tony..."

He drops back to the mattress, letting out a deep breath. Pepper rests her hand on his stomach.

"I was back there. In a nightmare. This time I couldn't - " He screws his eyes shut and takes another deep breath. "The whole damn city died on my watch. Courtesy of a nuke from a government that's supposed to protect them."

"But you did stop it," she points out gently.

The missed call on her phone is proof enough of that. She thinks that, for perhaps the rest of her life, she will regret nothing so much as missing that call. Because what if he hadn't come back? If they'd closed the portal too early, and his body would still be out there, somewhere in the universe where she was not, poisoned with radiation and floating among the stars. That would've been the last thing she would've had from him. A missed phone call. A notification on a screen. 

It's both a tremendous compliment and a heavy burden. To have been the last one he wanted to speak to. To be the one he would say his dying words. She strokes the side of his face as he nods at her words, a repetitive pattern over his goatee, wondering what it is he would've said to him. What she would say in return. She decides, in this moment, that she wants to be there. In the end. Which will hopefully, if she has anything to say about it, be a long time from now. She wants to be there, not on the phone. She wants to be able to hold him, like she does now, circling her arms around his shoulders. His jaw rests against her collarbone, her cheek against his hair.

"What happens next time? When there's more aliens. Another nuke. I can't stop them all."

"You don't have to do it alone."

Tony nods but there's a faraway look in his eyes. She knows him too well to think he's accepted the words. It will always be his burden. Something he will suffer alone. The need to protect everyone.

She lets her index finger run along the curve of his cheek. 

"Is that offer to move in still avaliable?" 

Tony shifts, sitting up to face her.

"You can't move in because of the aliens."

"Aliens are the last thing on my mind, actually."

"I don't want you to..." He pauses. "I want you to move in. But Pep, I'm a mess."

"I know."

"I'm - wait. You're supposed to say I'm not."

"But you  _are,_ " she chuckles at the look on his face. Kisses him and watches the way he softens after. "Tony, I want to be here for you. I don't think I'll ever understand what you went through. But I want to help as much as I can."

"Being my roommate will definitely help."

She rolls her eyes. "I'm not your roommate, Tony."

"Bunk buddies?" 

She silences him with another kiss. 

 

*

 

Steve Rogers is the first avenger to appear once Stark tower is officially repaired.

Pepper greets him at the door. He looks a little overwhelmed. She can almost see, in his expression, how he was once smaller, leaner man. A boy. But he gives her a courteous smile, calls her  _ma'am_ when he shakes her hand, and his manners are certainly gentlemanly. Pepper leads him across the lavish ground floor to the elevator, where she almost worries for a second that he'll weigh too much for the damn thing to work, and he clasps his hands in front of his body. There's no attempt at small talk. It's oddly refreshing. Still, when she studies him in the elevator doors reflection, she thinks she can understand why he and Tony butted heads.

Steve's floor had been her favourite to decorate. It'd given her an excuse to search antique stores, unlike the rest of SI, which is all modern taste. She almost feels like she's walked into a trendier version of her grandparents' house when she steps off of the elevator.

Steve lets out a low whistle, eyebrows rising.

"Stark didn't decorate this," he states.

Pepper smiles wryly.

"He gave me a theme. I ran with it." 

Steve turns his attention from the decoration to her.

"What's a lady like yourself doing working for Stark, anyway?"

Pepper frowns slightly. 

"Not that a lady can't work," Steve blurts. "I shouldn't call you lady. Dame? Uh - "

Pepper can't help it. She laughs slightly. This is the last thing she had expected from Captain America. 

Behind them, the elevator dings again. They both turn to see Tony stepping off. He walks over with his hands in his pockets, sunglasses on even though it's the evening, pouting slightly. Posturing. She's seen this look on him plenty of times. His  _I desperately seek your approval but I'm going to pretend I don't care_ look. He certainly wore it around her often enough for her to be acquainted with it.

"Cap."

"Stark," Steve says. They don't shake hands. "Thank you. This place is... something."

"Hey, you're free to negotiate New York real estate if you're too much of a golden boy for a whole damn floor." 

"Tony," she chides.

He pulls the sunglasses off, winking at her before pressing a swift kiss against her lips. He ends up stepping into her space after, his palm against her back, and she can feel the tension running through him. She slips her arm around his back in return, squeezing his hip for reassurance.

Steve Rogers has gone bright red.

"Mr Rogers - "

He shakes his head but continues to glow like a tomato. 

"Please. Steve is fine."

"Can I call you Steve?" Tony pipes up.

"Cap is fine." 

"Captain Beetroot?"

Steve averts his eyes to the ground.

"Sorry. I just hadn't realised. You two - you, uh. Never mind."

"No, no, speak your mind. I'm a big boy. I can take it."

Steve shifts his gaze between the two of them, smiling slightly.

"I didn't think you were the type for relationships, Stark."

Tony glances over at her.

"Yeah. Neither did I."

Despite the tension, and the missteps Steve takes around her - oddly, even more nervous around her after learning that not only does she  _not_ work for Tony, but is his CEO, and his partner - he moves in. Tony considers it a victory, as though he hasn't been craving for people to fill his spaces for years now.

 

*

 

Bruce Banner appears next.

He is mild mannered, bordering on unbearably humble, but pleasant. Unlike Steve, he is aware of her relationship with Tony, so when she is showing Bruce around his floor and Tony appears, complaining that he burnt his hand and she should kiss it better, he isn't the slightest bit bewildered. She's certain Tony is putting on a show and tries to usher him away, but he insists on following them during the tour, occasionally jabbing Bruce with the nearest sharp object. 

Like Steve, Bruce moves in. He's the one that stays in the most, avoiding people in general or just the public eye, she isn't sure which. But he's a good companion for Tony in the workshop built in the tower. It means she doesn't have to listen to Tony rambling about things she doesn't understand anymore, either, he bounces all of his ideas off of Bruce. They become so comfortable around each other that Pepper doesn't even blink when Tony lightly electrocutes Bruce, trying to get the hulk to appear.

 

*

 

Black Widow and Hawkeye - or, as she grows to know them, Natasha and Clint - appear without warning. She's not sure, exactly, when either of them appear. She notices activity on their levels one day. When Tony goes up to see them, Clint is in his underwear eating a bowl of cheerios, and Natasha is repainting her bedroom. It's hard to imagine either of them fighting by Tony's side.

She's glad they do.

 

*

 

The Avengers moving into Stark tower - or, as the media has now dubbed it, the Avengers tower - is so scrutinised that the press completely miss her quietly moving into Tony's malibu home. 

It's been a long time coming. Tony points it out to her. Several times. Especially since the majority of her things are already at his. He's almost insufferable during the move, but he provides the heavy lifting with his suit, meaning she doesn't have to worry about vetting moving vans who would surely sell the story to the press. 

The first night that she's officially moved in, over a month after New York, Tony is practically bouncing off the walls. He seems intent on hosting her, as though she's a guest, and she walks through the building, thinking how truly different her life is to how she'd envisioned it. When she'd left her hometown, she'd had big dreams, but they certainly hadn't been this big, and they certainly hadn't revolved so heavily around her affections for a man. She hadn't actually thought herself capable to love someone as much as she does Tony. It still takes her aback sometimes, when he smiles at her and gives her that misty-eyed look, or when he inevitably finds a way to insert himself into a conversation she's having with an avenger, just to give himself an excuse to show off the fact she's his girlfriend. 

Pepper presses herself against his side that night, letting the dark of the room shroud the vulnerability she's feeling.

"You know," she confesses quietly, "this is new to me."

"Living in my house? I've told you, you've been doing that for years."

"No. I mean - living with somebody. A partner. I've always lived alone."

He's quiet for a moment. She feels him take a measured breath. She longs for the day that he doesn't question himself around her, that he isn't afraid to lose her, because she's not going anywhere. Not for a long time.

"You haven't?"

"No. I never saw why people did. I like my space."

"I've always lived alone too."

Pepper scoffs. "That's not  _news._ "

She can feel him grinning. 

"Still counts."

Pepper snuggles deeper against him, beneath the sheets that are  _theirs,_ in the bed that  _they_ sleep in. How odd. To no longer be an  _I._ For everything to be shared.

She likes it.

"Thank you," Tony says quietly.

She squeezes him.

"Thank  _you_."

"I love you," he tells her. 

"I love you too." 

And when the nightmares come again a week later, she's right beside him.


	6. Chapter 6

When she leaves, it's for all the right reasons. Yet she's still breaking her own heart.

Tony doesn't try to smile. To cover the pain. She's grateful for it. She cannot hide her own suffering.

His index finger drifts down her spine. Slowly. Over each vertebrae. When he's done, she slips her t-shirt over her head, the fabric a poor substitute for his touch. She doesn't look at him as she packs her things. Even as he passes her parts of their life together to fold away at the bottom of a suitcase.

It's a long, arduous process. She's been living with him for years. There's a part of her seeped into everything in the building, even after the remodelling following the Extremis attack. Every time she thinks she's finished she'll spot something else to put away. Another reminder to drag out the door.

Tony helps her with her bags. Packs them away in her trunk for her. He doesn't stop her or question her when she wanders back into the house for one last look. He holds her when she cries in the kitchen and repeats apologies against her temple. She rests her forehead against his clavicle and lets the sobs overwhelm her.

After, he walks her to her car, and she slips the key to his place off of the keyring. 

He pushes it away.

"Keep it," he tells her. Firm. "You'll be coming back."

It sounds like a question.

She nods. Her cheeks are still blotchy and she can't get her mouth to work and form words.

Tony leans in and presses a chaste kiss to the edge of her lips.

"Don't be gone too long," he murmurs.

She catches the sleeve of his jacket. 

"Give me a reason to come back," she returns. 

The drive away from the house causes a clawing kind of ache deep in her chest. She pulls over after driving three miles and sits staring at the sky as it begins to change from dusk to stars.

 

*

 

She chooses her new apartment based on all the reasons she had her old one: good security, a safe neighbourhood, and privacy.

He has never been there but she sees him in everything. When she's making breakfast she imagines him leaning against the counter, cracking a joke and almost spilling her coffee into her lap. On her rare days off she sees him sitting in the armchair by the window, scribbling into a notebook, new designs for a suit. The worst way she imagines him is in her bed. There's nothing sexual about the way she pictures him there. She simply craves his presence. The way he steals all of the sheets and takes up all the space. The bed is too big without him, the sheets too suffocating, the mattress too cold. She knows that if she called, he'd be there in an instant, filling up all of the space that is suddenly just _hers_ instead of theirs. She doesn't call.

 

*

 

It takes her an agonising eight days to write a PR statement about their break.

It's short. Two lines:  _Mr Stark and Miss Potts regret to announce that they have ended their relationship. They ask for privacy during this time and thank you for your understanding._

She almost sends it to Tony to proofread. Almost.

 

*

 

Happy stares at her for too long in the rearview mirror. She ignores him for as long as she can.

"He hurt you?"

Pepper meets his eyes. 

"Of course not."

Happy grips the steering wheel a little tighter.

"I don't mean - like that," Happy says, a little strangled. "But if he kicked you out, made you leave - "

"Happy," she interrupts.

He stares at her like she has something more to say. Maybe she should. There's a lot of things she'd like to say, really, mostly in Tony's defense. Most of it is just pondering on why everyone thinks Tony's the one that did the leaving. As though _she's_ incapable of letting him go. It makes her wonder if she's the only one on the planet who's ever really known Tony at all. He clings to everything so tightly for fear of losing it that he crushes it under his grip. She has always been methodical. She has always been the one to predict what he would break next and stop it before it happened. And so she left.

Happy diverts his attention back to the road and they finish the ride in silence.

 

*

 

She doesn't see him for six weeks. While Pepper throws her entirety into SI, Tony seems to withdraw completely. It's completely the opposite of what she'd wanted. The whole point of the break was for him to find himself. To learn to live with building the suits without using them as a crutch, because for the last three months of their relationship she couldn't remember a time he  _wasn't_ building a suit. The breaking point had been when she'd woken one night to find him fiddling with a pulse reactor at the end of their bed.

So she continues to do what she knows. Handles board meetings, fields questions from the rabid press about their relationship, and works overtime so that she doesn't have to go home to the apartment where everything is too empty and unlived in. Where there aren't smudges of oil on the work surfaces and orange peels discarded and forgotten on the coffee table.

Tony - 

Well, she imagines he keeps building.

After six weeks, they pass each other by happenstance. Her P.A. is hot on her heels, following her from her office to Finance, when Tony steps off the elevator.

Pepper stops and her P.A bumps into her back, apologising frantically. Tony stares at her. She tries to think of something to say. Anything. She wants to be mature about this. It's not like she hasn't done this before. She's had workplace relationships that have ended (not at SI) and managed to continue working civilly. 

But those relationships were flings. She hadn't even been halfway in love with any of them. 

Tony ducks his head and steamrolls right past her, murmuring a _Miss Potts_ in acknowledgement. Pepper collects herself and doesn't watch him go. Allows her spine to straighten, for her heels to click as she crosses the hall and stabs the button for the elevator, and definitely  _doesn't_ have tears in her eyes, especially when her P.A. offers her a tissue.

She cancels her appearance at MIT that afternoon.

 

*

 

It's unfair, really, how he is able to knock the wind out of her.

Pepper stretches herself along the length of her couch, a battered copy of Virginia Woolf's  _Mrs Dalloway_ in her hands, a novel which has always sucked her in and blocked out the noise of the outside world.

There's scribbles of his in the margins of the book accompanying her own. Sometimes smiley faces against her comments. Sometimes he's underlined passages she's overlooked, praising the quality of writing. Other points he's outright disagreed with her. 

Pepper snaps the novel shut. Later that day Sokovia is blown to smithereens. He doesn't call. She doesn't think she'd answer.

 

*

 

No matter what, she always finds herself returning to one moment between them in her dreams.

Shortly after she'd calmed him from one of his nightmares, when he still had the arc reactor, and it glowed soft and lit the room. It gentled the line of his jaw, that light. It made something different shine in his eyes. 

She'd been beside him. Propped up on her elbow, a hand resting on his stomach. He'd leaned up to kiss just under her chin. 

"Does it bother you?"

Pepper had shook her head.

"No. Of course it doesn't bother me."

Tony had taken her hand, tugged it to rest above the arc reactor.

"This time tomorrow it'll be gone. I'll be normal again."

"Tony, you were never normal."

He'd grinned at that. He'd squeezed her hand.

"You'll still love me?"

She'd frowned. Her heart had tripped uncomfortably in her chest.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"That heroic allure will be gone," he'd replied. "I'll fit each suit with an arc reactor, but it won't be the same."

His hand had brushed through her hair to cup her jaw. She'd snaked her hand up along his chest, his neck, to push through his hair, to cup the back of his skull. 

"Iron Man isn't why I love you. These suits will always be a part of you," she'd told him, watching as he'd swallowed roughly, "but I love the man who forgets the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody. The man who tries to cook me pancakes in the morning and always burns them. The one who buys me a ridiculously oversized bunny for Christmas. That man is the man I love. Who I'll never stop loving."

"I still maintain that it wasn't that big," he'd argued weakly. Then he'd kissed her. "Thank you."

He'd always do that. Thank her for loving him. As though it was a gift. As though he didn't deserve it.

"I'll be right there with you. It'll be fine," she'd assured him. And of course, she'd been right. 

Even now, she thinks a part of her will always be there in that room with him, promising him forever in that gentle blue light.

 

*

 

Her phone buzzes on her bedside table at four in the morning.  _Tony._

She lets it go to voicemail and hits play immediately.

 _Pepper,_ he says. Then he takes a long, slow breath.  _I'm in Siberia._ Another pause. A distant clang of metal hitting metal.  _My suit's busted. Cap broke the reactor._ She's already climbing out of bed, pulling on clothes.  _Anyway. I don't have a way to get home._ She grabs the nearest pair of shoes to wear. He laughs and she can hear how bitter it is through the tinny of the phone's speaker. _You're pretty much the only one I can count on for this sort of thing. So, can you get a jet to me?_ There's a long, long pause. She's grabbed all of her things and made it halfway down her building in the elevator before he speaks again.  _I don't have a god damn thing worth caring about anymore. Except you._ She pauses at her building door to take a deep breath. She can hear him start to cry.  _Just - please. Have a jet bring me home._

The wind outside buffets against her. She pulls her coat tighter around her frame and clings to her phone.

_And Pepper? Come home, too._

 

*

 

It takes eight hours to get to Siberia. 

Tony's waiting, battered and bruised. Dried blood stains the side of his face. He steps onto the jet and out of his suit like he's in a trance, dropping the Captain's shield to the floor. It clatters away from him. She watches him from her seat, torn between getting up and staying where she is. He doesn't notice her at first, and collapses into the nearest chair, not buckling himself in as the jet immediately takes off again. He covers his face with a weary hand and lets out a noise that's something between a shaky exhale and a cry.

"Tony."

His hand slips and he stares at her, wide-eyed, full of wonder even though fatigue clings to his silhouette.

She unbuckles herself from her seat, crouching in front of him. She reaches out and cups his face in her hands. He follows her eagerly, his fingers wrapping around her wrist, so tightly they will surely leave bruises. 

"He got away," Tony says. His eyes leave her to focus on the forgotten shield. "He gave up on everything. The accords. The Avengers."

She hears the small, unspoken  _me_ hanging in the air between them.

"He gave up on all of it for a man who killed my parents."

She doesn't understand, not entirely, but one day he'll explain it completely. 

"I'm so tired, Pepper. Tired of it all. The suits. The team. All of it." 

She rests her cheek against his knee. It's hard to appear so calm on the outside when she feels the anger threatening to take her over inside. Tony had succeeded in stabilising Extremis, true, but she can still feel it deep within her, a dull burn that aches when she thinks of the Captain hurting Tony. A thin thread that would snap if she gave into it.

"It's okay," she reassures him. He reaches out to link their hands together. "You take all the time you need."

"Will you stay?" 

"Yes." 

He swallows.

"And after that? The suits are a part of me, Pepper. Will you keep staying?" 

She lets her fingers drift along his ring finger.

"Forever and a day."

 

*

 

After Siberia, they buy a house in New York that's entirely theirs. It's free of the ghosts of their past even if they cling to Tony late at night. The nightmares start up again, more frequent than before, almost as bad as they had been before Extremis. He takes to wearing nano technology that's so similar to his arc reactor she'd thought she'd woken in the wrong time. But she doesn't stop him. She doesn't reprimand him. It's who he is. And who he is is a man deserving of love, who should never keep being left.

One morning, the white morning light flooding through the windows, she's sitting on the edge of the bed watching him wake. FRIDAY gently informs them of the time once Tony's eyes are open. 

"Watching me sleep?" Tony asks. "I've had stalkers more discreet than you, you know."

"Is this all you'll ever want?"

He rubs the sleep away from his eyes and sits up. What a privilege, she thinks, to be the one who gets to watch him first taking in a new day. 

"What?"

"Me. You're a superhero, Tony. You could have anything or anyone. Am I really all you'll ever want?" 

"Yes," he answers without hesitation.

Pepper takes a deep breath.

"Okay. Then I'll marry you."

Tony's jaw drops.

"What?"

She grins. "Is the offer not on the table anymore?" 

Tony closes the distance between them in no time. His arms wrap around her tightly as she falls against his chest, laughing, stopping only to kiss him. 

"Always stealing my thunder," he says against her lips, and then his hand cups her jaw, sure and strong, and there are no more words.

 

*

 

The press had no idea they'd even gotten back together. So when Tony drops down onto one knee in front of her in front of a few dozen journalists, the cameras go crazy, and the questions being thrown at them drown out the words falling from his lips. She nods anyway, slightly breathless, and lets him kiss her firmly to the sound of camera shutters. She closes her eyes against the flashes and presses her hand to his cheek. The unfamiliar feel of the engagement ring is heavy on her fingers, but welcoming. 

After answering a few questions, they slip back out, walking hand-in-hand through the compound halls. He's borderline obsessed with her. A skip to his step that hadn't been there before. But this time his happiness is steady. It isn't desperate. And he doesn't hold her like he's waiting for her to slip from his grasp. Pepper realises, with a soft jolt, that she has the power to keep him grounded, just as he has the power to make her daring. A perfect balancing act. How strange and wonderful, she thinks, to look at him and know that he is certain, that he is her future. When she'd first started working for him, she'd immediately started looking for a new job. If only she could go back and tell her younger self how well everything would turn out.

Tony opens the door for her, releasing her hand for the first time. He bows slightly.

"After you, Mrs Stark."

Pepper smacks a kiss against his cheek and breezes past him.

"Thank you, Mr Potts."


End file.
